The latest Marine Notice from the Department of Transport advises that Kinsale Energy’s well decommissioning operations at the Kinsale and Seven Heads gas fields will continue in June and July.

The Stena Spey mobile offshore drilling unit (callsign GCWP) is performing the campaign off the South Coast of Ireland with the rig to be positioned at various locations as outlined in Marine Notice No 38 of 2021, which can be downloaded below.

The Stena Spey is currently operating at the Southwest Kinsale Gas Field and will relocate to the Seven Heads Gasfield area in early July.

Pre-lay anchoring activities will get under way later this week (between 10-13 June) prior to the rig relocating to the Seven Heads Gasfield area. These will be conducted by anchor handling vessels MV Maersk Maker (callsign OZGO2) and MV Maersk Mariner (callsign OWGQ2).

Once the Stena Spey is moored at the Seven Heads location, a anchor handling vessel will be chartered to stay with the rig until the end of the campaign. In addition, the rig will retain its permanent standby vessel, the MV VOS Pathfinder (callsign 2ALO7) which will be in the field throughout all operations.

The work vessels will be listening on VHF Channel 16 throughout the operation. All other vessels, particularly those engaged in fishing, are requested to give the rig (and pre-laid anchor patterns) a wide berth and to keep a sharp lookout in the relevant areas.

Coordinates of the anchor positions and other details are included in the Marine Notice attached below.

Partrac Ltd intend to deploy three Metocean buoys at the Dublin Array offshore wind farm in a one-day operation some time between this Wednesday 9 and Wednesday 23 June, weather permitting.

One floating lidar buoy and two wave buoys will be deployed by the AMS Retriever (callsign MEHI8) which will be displaying all appropriate lights and shapes.

The floating lidar buoy has a square footprint with an area of 4m2 and a height of some 4m above the water line. It is yellow in colour and has a St Andrew’s cross on top.

The wave buoys are spherical in shape with a diameter of around 1.1m. When deployed, the wave buoys appear clear with a yellow hull.

Both the floating lidar buoy and the wave buoys have a yellow light which emits five flashes every 20 seconds. The light is visible for up to three nautical miles.

The floating lidar buoy will be deployed for a period of four to eight weeks. It will then be moved to a permanent position in the south end of Dublin Array where it will be deployed for 18 months. The wave buoys will be deployed for a period of 12 months.

The floating lidar buoy will be towed approximately 30m astern of the AMS Retriever at a maximum speed of four knots.

As such, the vessel will be restricted in its ability to manoeuvre so all other boats operating in proximity are requested to keep their distance, maintaining a safety zone around the deployment vessel and pass at minimum speed to reduce vessel wash.

Details of the buoy locations are included in Marine Notice No 37 of 2021 which can be downloaded below.

Vermilion Exploration & Production Ireland Limited is scheduled to carry out maintenance work at the Corrib subsea infrastructure from next Sunday 13 June.

The maintenance work at the Corrib Gas Field will take place at Latitude 54° 20’ 20.413” N, Longitude 11° 03’ 30.769” W and is expected to take up to five days to complete.

The Edda Sun (Callsign LARF7) will undertake the subsea scope of work. All equipment used will be vessel- and/or ROV-mounted. The vessel will be listening on VHF channel 16 throughout the project.

Further information on the survey area is available Marine Notice No 36 of 2021 which can be downloaded below.

The Department of Transport has been advised of a geophysical marine route survey operation taking place in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean off Galway and Mayo from next week.

The survey activity will take place within the Irish TS, Irish CZ and Irish EEZ and is scheduled to begin today, Monday 7 June for completion some five months later in early November, weather permitting.

The survey will be conducted by the RV Ridley Thomas (callsign V7JK2) which will undertake 24/7 cable route operations.

Survey operations will include the stern deployment of a sonar towfish tethered with steel cable at varying water depths, to collect geophysical/bathymetric mapping data for a proposed undersea telecommunications cable.

The vessel will be monitoring VHF channels 16 and 13, and will display appropriate lights and signals. All vessels operating within the survey areas are requested to keep their distance, maintaining a safety zone around the survey vessel and pass at minimum speed to reduce vessel wash.

Full details of the survey, including relevant coordinates, are included in Marine Notice No 35 of 2021 which can be downloaded below.

Green Rebel Marine in Crosshaven intends to conduct geophysical survey operations off the South Coast between Cork and Waterford cities over an extended period of time, up to a year from this Thursday 3 June.

The survey will be conducted by two vessels: the semi-SWATH catamaran Roman Rebel (callsign 2ICA5) which will conduct 24-hr operations, and the Lady Kathleen (callsign EIXT2), a catamaran which will conduct 12-hr operations. Both vessels will display appropriate lights and signals.

The geophysical survey will use a multibeam echosounder and sub-bottom profilers, which will be hull-mounted, as well as side-scan sonars and magnetometers that will be towed using dedicated winches at cable lengths dictated by the water depth (typically four times the water depth while acquiring data).

Full details of coordinates of the survey areas are included in Marine Notice No 33 of 2021, a PDF of which can be downloaded below.

Following the start of route clearance and pre-lay operations last month, SubCom will carry out cable installation works along the route of the Grace Hopper subsea fibre optic cable system route in the Irish EEZ from this weekend.

The first of two operations begins this Saturday 29 May and continues to Wednesday 30 June, with the second set to run from 26 July to 15 August, both weather permitting.

The operations will be conducted from the CS Responder (callsign V7CY9) which will display appropriate lights and shapes and will be listening to VHF Channel 16 (but can be set to any other as required).

The CS Responder will be towing stern-deployed equipment and so will be restricted in its manoeuvrability. All vessels operating within its work area are requested to keep their distance, and pass at minimum speed to reduce vessel wash.

Full details of relevant coordinates are included in Marine Notice No 34 of 2021, a PDF of which can be downloaded below.

Green Rebel Marine in Crosshaven is set to undertake a geophysical survey operation in the Celtic Sea from next week.

The survey from next Wednesday 26 May to 23 June, weather permitting, will be conducted by the Roman Rebel (callsign 2ICA5) using hull-mounted multibeam and sub-bottom profiling systems.

In addition, the vessel will be towing side-scan sonars and magnetometers using dedicated winches at cable lengths dictated by the water depth. Typically, the cable lengths will be about four times the water depth while acquiring data.

The Roman Rebel will display appropriate lights and signals and all survey operations will be conducted 24 hours a day, continuous over day and night.

Full details of coordinates of the survey areas are included in Marine Notice No 32 of 2021, which can be downloaded below.

A number of acoustic listening stations have been depleted at Tory Island to detect the presence tagged marine wildlife as part of an EU INTERREG research project.

The 12 ALS units have been placed in the waters around the island off the coast of North Donegal.

Most are in depths of more than 30 metres and are fitted with acoustic releases, without the need for lines to surface.

A small number of inshore arrays are attached to 16-inch orange hard floats marked ‘SeaMonitor’ with a corresponding ID. If accidentally hauled or otherwise found out of place, they also contain contact details for retrieval by the project coordinators.

Further details, including coordinate of the ALS locations, can be found in Marine Notice No 31 of 2021 which is available to download below.

The latest Marine Notice for works on the Codling Wind Park project advises of the deployment of metocean equipment between today, Tuesday 11 and Friday 28 May.

One wave buoy and one acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) frame will be deployed and used to characterise the wind park area at the Codling Bank some 13km off Co Wicklow.

These works are being carried out on a 12-hour basis by the AMS Retriever (callsign MEHI8) which will display all appropriate shapes and lights.

The vessel will be restricted in ability to manoeuvre so all other vessels in the are are requested to keep a their distance and pass at minimum speed to reduce wash.

Further details, including relevant coordinates, are included in Marine Notice No 30 of 2021 which can be downloaded below.

More works are scheduled for the Codling Wind Park project, with the deployment of two lidar buoys to characterise the wind park area from this week.

Weather permitting, the Voe Vanguard (callsign MBEN9) will deploy the buoys in the Irish Sea off Co Wicklow between tomorrow, Tuesday 27 April and Friday 14 May.

Deployment operations will be conducted on a 12-hour basis. The Voe Vanguard will be restricted in ability to manoeuvre, so all vessels operating within its work area are requested to keep their distance, maintaining a safety zone around the survey vessel and pass at minimum speed to reduce vessel wash.

Throughout survey operations, the Voe Vanguard will be displaying appropriate lights and shapes. The lantern on the buoys will give out five yellow flashes every 20 seconds, visible for up to three nautical miles.

Further details including the relevant coordinates are included in Marine Notice No 29 of 2021, which is available to download below.

The latest notice follows previous advisories for geophysical surveys and geotechnical surveys over the next number of weeks for the wind farm scheme at the Codling Bank.